Department of Social Sciences and Business

This article takes up the challenge of demonstrating that ‘we’ can learn from Tokyo about the intrinsic importance of in-between realms to a cosmopolitan culture: the urban sanctuaries. It has four sections. The first section encircles a location from where to learn from Tokyo as well as an angle from where to start. This leads into the leading concept of the article: the urban sanctuary. The second section goes back in history to the early modern era and, with point of departure in traveller’s reports, localises an experience of strangeness and familiarity when it comes to a distinct ritual choreography for meeting at eye level. At the centre of the third section is a second generation of Japanese architects who came to maturity after World War II. Here, the work of Arata Isozaki is of specific interest, because it is precisely a formula for the construction of an urban sanctuary that sets up an in-between realm for an international culture that he returns to in work and life: the traditional concept of ‘interval’ or ma’. The final section relates Tokyo as a command centre for the global economy to its urban sanctuaries. It calls for a broadening of the research agenda by addressing a new set of questions concerning a formula for an in-between – a distinct ritual choreography for meeting the stranger with (universal) hospitality.► The article examines cosmopolitan cultures in the World City Tokyo. ► First the early modern era and travelers’ reports on cultures of civility. ► Next with a focus on coping with instabilities in modern Tokyo. ► A second generation of post war architects, the idea about ‘in between’ and the Japanese term ma. ► Market society and the ritual qualities of genuine contract making.

The city is a key location of the modern social world, a home of
rootlessness and transient everyday encounters between individuals. This
essay explores the idea of 'the sanctuary' as a way in which people look for
anchorage, and create and re-create images of a society, to cope with and
negotiate life in the city. It mainly draws on Durkheim's work on ritual,
symbolism and the sacred, together with his account of individual and col
lective representations. But it also discusses these concerns though other
writers, notably Freud and Ricœur, and it draws on Kant's theory of art to
introduce how Durkheim sees ritual -especially sacred drama - as at once
a symbolism and an aesthetics, complete with the energies of a free creative
'surplus'. Even if in the end 'the sanctuary' is unequal to the marketplace,
it is a necessary refuge of the transformative social imagination and a
realm, not of everyday economics, but of ci

The article discusses the relevance of Emile Durkheim for contemporary debates
about citizenship and democracy. If the concepts of social bonds and solidarity
which have existed from the classical period of the welfare state until today are
under revision the question is whether the thoughts of Durkheim have lost
relevance too? Parsons's interpretation of Durkheim as a theorist of social
order is criticized. He did not look for a functional order of the Parsonian type.
More likely Durkheim was preoccupied with the paradoxes and problems of the
liberal state, that is the search for a type of authority compatible with modern
individual rights. Durkheim's focal interest in intermediary institutions is
analysed and related to the neoliberal view of the welfare state as having too
much influence over the individual. It tends to forget les corps intermédiaires as
important preconditions for the construction of citizenship and modern
democracies. The communitarian vision of modern intermediary bodies in the
1990s is criticized for being too local in its perspective.

Abstract

The Benefits and Limitations of Being a Project Manager in a Nonprofit and Non-Governmental Organization: A Qualitative Explanatory Embedded Single-case Study About Project Management Issues
Roskilde University, Department of Social Sciences and Business

This qualitative explanatory embedded single-case study examined why the Manager and the volunteering medical students in the nonprofit and NGO International Medical Cooperation Committee meet challenges. The study followed Robert K. Yin’s guidelines for conducting case study research.
The study had a deductive approach to examine experiences by conducting open-ended interviews and indirect observation of Facebook group data with the aim of data triangulation.
In consent with the deductive methodology, the theory was chosen based on hypothesized causal relations. In this sense, Mintzberg's Organizational Configurations, Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, Herzberg's Two-Factor Theory and a stakeholder analysis were chosen to analyze the statements using pattern matching.
No conflicting data could be demonstrated, and a trend of common denominators was found.
The structure shares the characteristics of an innovative divisional organization. This causes a flat hierarchy that entails conflict when no volunteers assume responsibility.
It poses a challenge, that the volunteer's lives are dynamic. This results in a fluid positioning, shifting their seeking of motivational needs. This implies the volunteers to be inconsistent in assuming responsibility.
Social events lead to dissatisfaction through absence. The manager faces the dilemma that the volunteers will be saturated if they do not develop.
The flat structure requires the volunteers to assume responsibility. The project is therefore dependent on this responsibility being taken to ensure a flow of clients receiving the education.
This study indicates a complex dilemma. Nonprofit NGOs has their benefit, as the workforce is unpaid, however, the limitation is that no work agreement exists. This results in inconsistent behavior due to dynamic motivation seeking patterns antagonizing the project's goal.
In this regard, the Manager is stuck in the middle, colliding with the benefits and limitations.

Abstract

The Paradox of Managing: A Qualitative Political Sociological Phenomenological Study of Three Public School Teachers Experiences Following the Danish Public-School Reform (law 1640 & 409)
Roskilde University, Department of Social Sciences and Business

This qualitative political sociological study examined the experiences of three public school teachers who were affected by the public-school reform.
The authors had an emphasis on the phenomenologically inductive approach to examine the teachers' experiences by conducting in-depth lifeworld interviews.
The aim was to phenomenologically research how the decision-making and implementation processes of the reform were experienced.
In compliance with the inductive methodological project design, the theory was chosen after the lifeworld interviews were comprehensively coded and categorized. In this sense, Christopher Hoods New Public Management theory, Jürgen Habermas Communicative Action theory, and Axel Honneth Struggle for Recognition theory were chosen to analyze the statements.
Despite minor individual differences in the statements, a trend of common denominators was found. These resulted in frustration due to new working time regulations and key performance indicators the reform had implemented.
These changes entailed frustration when having to prioritize standardized task over the quality of work, and in some cases resulted in resentment.
In addition, the feeling of frustration was explained by the reforms aim of fitting the teachers' profession into control systems, antagonizing their previous flexible system.
Furthermore, the teachers experienced a lack of recognition, of their spheres of interaction which are connected to their three patterns of recognition necessary for their development of a positive relation- to-self, resulting in a lack of meaningful work satisfaction.
In this regard, the reform was felt as a rising tendency to manage the teachers’ profession towards a more economically rational approach of managing, which weighs NPMs standardized knowledge before judicious solutions.
This study suggests an inherent error in the way NPM operates. NPMs goal of streamlining the teaching profession could end up being ineffective and unfavorable.

For decades Nicaraguans have migrated to Costa Rica seeking life improvement. A large part of this migration is constituted outside the law, which makes it irregular. Due to their legal status, irregular Nicaraguan migrants are more likely to work in Costa Rica's informal economy, where lack of social protection and vulnerability of exploitation are common situations. In order to grant social protection and proper labour standards to these irregular migrant workers, formalising informal wage work may seem as a beneficial response. Nevertheless, this formalisation can have repercussions on irregular migrant workers by closing the life betterment they found in the informal economy, thus making this process a paradox. Formalisation then offers the possibility of interrelating informal wage employment and irregular migration. Considering the legalist and the structuralist schools of thought, this paper looks at such interrelation through causality, formalisation attempts and hypothetical issues. Among several conclusions, it is noticed a limited involvement of Nicaraguan migrant workers in formalisation and decision making processes in Costa Rica, which should be further addressed. In all, this case study serves as an example of how phenomena and processes within South­South migration concerning informality should be approached contextually and holistically.

In this thesis I explore and identify notions of success on vocational education by looking at the development of pre-vocational and vocational education in Bangladeshi secondary schools as part of an education programme funded by the Asian Development Bank. Based on this case study, I debate notions of success from a Bangladeshi policy level, and contribute to the recent theoretical wave of re-thinking vocational education as a sector that should not focus only in economic-based factors, but that should also put attention to more humanised criteria. I do this by studying discourses coming from different actors behind the conducted interviews and focus groups, official documents and fieldwork. The contrasting nature of the two principal approaches on the topic: the productivist approach and the human development approach collaborate in such analysis by providing a basis of reflection about vocational education within a developmental context. Thereupon, I contribute to human developmentalist explorations, as productivism offers flawed perceptions that end up in aspirational mismatches within actors, dependency cycles, and is limited in understanding multidimensional social issues surrounding vocational education. These approaches together with the Bangladeshi case make clear that although discourse might affect policy and practice in several ways, it mostly affects the vocationalised, which is why we need to advocate for more agential takes when studying vocational education in development studies.

I deres interview med den italienske sociolog og filosof Maurizio Lazzarato stiller ph.d.studerende Magnus Hansen og Matheiu Charbonneau skarpt på den omfattende gældstiftelse som udgør en grundlæggende social praksis i vor tids kapitalisme.

Turbulens har interviewet professor Ove K. Pedersen i anledning af hans nye bog Markedsstaten, der tager fat på skabelsen af nogle af de mest grundlæggende størrelser i dag - stat, marked og individet. Markedsstaten er den moderne stat, der over en periode på mere end 100 år gradvist afløser enevældens periode. Markedstaten sætter præmisserne for vores forståelse af os selv som rationelle individer med egeninteresse og sætter rammerne for den daglige disciplinering, der sikrer at vi også forstår som sådanne. Markedsstaten er med andre ord den helt afgørende forudsætning for de mange senere reformer fra fx velfærdsstat til konkurrencestat.

The close ties between modes of governing, subjectivities and critique in contemporary societies challenge the role of critical social research. The classical normative ethos of the unmasking researcher unravelling various oppressive structures of dominant vs. dominated groups in society is inadequate when it comes to understand de-politicizing mechanisms and the struggles they bring about. This paper argues that only a non-normative position can stay attentive towards the constant and complex evolution of modes of governing and the critical operations actors themselves engage in. The paper outlines a non-normative but critical programme based on an ethos of re-politicizing contemporary pervasive modes of governing. The analytical advantages and limitations of such a programme are demonstrated by readings of both Foucauldian studies and the works of and debates regarding the French pragmatic sociology of Boltanski and Thévenot.

This review essay investigates two recent contributions - Geoffroy de Lagasnerie's "La dernière leçon de Michel Foucault" and Daniel Zamora's edited volume "Critiquer Foucault : Les années 1980 et la tentation néoliberale" - to the 'seduction thesis' - the claim that Michel Foucault, since the end of the 1970s became seduced by neoliberal thinkers. While the essay dismisses the 'seduction thesis', it calls for a need to revise some of the implicit theses on neoliberalism of Foucault and, in particular, governmentality studies.